Saturday, March 22, 2014

Why Jared Diamond Is Wrong About "Ecocide" on Easter Island And What This Means For The Green Movement

Easter Island attracts crackpots like no other place in the world. In a best selling and widely influential book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond (a more respectable breed of crackpot) took several cases of what he called prima facie ecocide and drew wide ranging conclusions from them. The case he devoted most space to was that of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) which he said was a gloomy portent of what could happen to planet Earth if we didn't get our act together. When the Polynesians immigrants arrived on Easter Island c. 1000AD they found a small volcanic rock covered with a dense palm forest. Over the next five hundred years the palms were cut down for slash and burn agriculture and for the timber logs needed to move the massive Moai statues all over the island. Diamond makes much hay of this Moai building claiming that the forests were denuded purely for ceremonial and status reasons - in effect for luxury goods. The effect of the deforestation led to crop failure, famine, war, cannabalism and a massive reduction in Easter Island's population from 15,000 to just over a 100 people by the end of the nineteenth century. Diamond goes on to draw the obvious conclusion: this could happen to spaceship Earth if we are as blind and shortsighted as the Rapa Nuians. Collapse was reviewed ecstatically in Science magazine by the prominent Australian environmental writer Tim Flannery (my daughter is in Tim Flannery House at her Melbourne school) and by the likes of Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. It has been cited hundreds of times since then by environmentalists both as paradigm case of man's eco foolishness, and as a prophecy of what could happen in the future......There is only one problem with all of this. A big problem. Diamond's book is almost certainly complete bollocks. Diamond spent no time doing original botanic or archaeological work on Easter Island, was not an expert in the field and thus based his research on secondary sources. Recently a book was published by scientists who actually work on Easter Island and they tell a rather different story. Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt from the University of Hawaii and U California argue that yes Easter Island was deforested (probably by a spike in the rat population) but when Europeans arrived the Rapa Nuians had adapted to the deforestation and were farming other crops in unique and clever ways, were still fishing and were healthy and happy: there was no evidence of cannablism, no evidence of war or of mass starvation. In their book The Statues That Walked they even debunk Diamond's claim that the Rapa Nuians had committed ecocide just to move their Moai around - the statues they say were almost certainly moved by ropes. The tales of cannabilism were invented by the usual suspects (French missionaries) to denigrate the old religion. ...In a BBC documentary I watched last night (shown here in Australia on SBS) Jago Cooper very carefully unpacks the ecocide argument and finds the Rapa Nuians not guilty. Interviewing all the relevant experts on Easter Island (scientists who actually do field work there) Cooper argues that yes Easter Island was deforested but also yes the population continued to thrive even after the forests had gone. How? Well through ingenious rock gardens, semi subterranean agricultural plantations, fishing, harvesting of bird life and many other unique and smart ways. When the Dutch arrived in 1722 the population was not starving but thriving and this was a hundred years after the last of the forests had gone. However fifty years later when Captain Cook came to Easter Island he found a population on its legs and almost completely wiped out. What happened? Well, the clue if he'd bothered to look, was in Jared Diamond's first book: Guns Germs and Steel. The Dutch brought European diseases which reduced the population of Easter Island by 90%. The rest of the Easter Islanders were carried away in slave raids. The final straw was the introduction of sheep at the end of the nineteenth and the effective imprisonment of the remaining Rapa Nuians. ...You can watch Jago Cooper's documentary on SBS here and make up your own mind. (I dont know if this link will work outside of Australia.) But I'm convinced by the scientists. The eco parable is wrong. On Easter Island human ingenuity saved the Rapa Nuians until the Dutch brought measles and the Spanish and Chileans brought guns. And thus, a fortiori, Diamond's argument about human ingenuity, climate change and planet Earth? Yes climate change is going to be devastating in the twenty first century, but human ingenuity is going to come up with many clever solutions to carbon fuel and carbon pollution...there's probably a kid in Africa right now who is going to become the solar energy Bill Gates......(I don't know if it's a coincidence or not but Jared Diamond, Tim Flannery and many of the other eco catastrophists were not trained as scientists (Both have BA's and only switched to science for their research degrees). I'm guessing that a BSc imposes a scientific rigour on the mind that you just don't get in an arts degree.)

59 comments:

Adrian,Pseudo science seems very much like fundamentalist religious beliefs and is still very much alive and hard to eradicate.I still do not understand which is the most influential nature or nurture and the current problem of what is a truly healthy diet.I don't know if we are preprogrammed at birth for alztheimers or some cancers.This topic of widely believed psuedo science is fascinating.Link not available.Best Alan

Dont get me wrong. I certainly dont think global warming is pseudo science. Its clearly happening but I am not an alarmist.

Yes the planet has been warming for the entire holocene era and yes its warming faster because of all the carbon we're dumping in the atmosphere. However I'm confident that humans will think our way out of impending disaster just as the humans on Easter Island thought their way out of their own eco nightmare.

Adrian,I am a bit more pessimistic about the human race's survival as I remember both the nuclear alert shelter drills as a child and the doctrine of M.A.D.during the "Cold War". I wonder about missing nuclear materials when the Soviet Union imploded and the proliferation of Bio-Chemical weapons in Libya/Syria with lunatic Jihadists et.al ranging the globe looking for a target .Ofcourse I hope I am wrong but reason often seems to fail humankind.Best Alan

Yeah I'm pessimistic too but not overly so. Things are better than the MAD days when human civilization cd largely have been wiped out in a few minutes.

The 21st century is going to be a huge challenge but I think humanity is going to be able to figure it out especially with the incredible innovation and development in unlikely places like Africa and SE Asia.

And yes I agree we've gotten off to a terrible start: the invasion of Iraq, Syria, etc. etc....

Fred Phelps's death and the disappearance of Flight 370 make these heady days for alarmists in America and elsewhere. I wonder when the first thoughts of apocalypse occurred to a human being and in what circumstance that human lived. If he had copyrighted the idea, he and his descendants would have been rich until the end of days.

Diamond is massively popular in Santa Cruz, as for that matter is Malcolm Gladwell. It's mainly Guns, Germs and Steel that everyone seems to read, though.

I have been thinking a lot about island ecology recently, after reading Darwin's Armada and then When The Killing's Done, T.C. Boyle's novel about the Channel Islands off southern California. Invasive snakes, rats, and, well, foreigners like the Europeans pose big problems in a closed system.

Thanks Adrian. I would find it hard to follow a novelist who didn't have faith in human ingenuity and redeemability. Although I'm happy enough to "trust the tale" regardless of what the novelist blogs.

It's a pity for wider discourse but the mechanical engineers and other applied science people don't really engage with the chattering classes. They don't see the point. They're comfortable enough knowing they'll always be needed.

Thats exactly the problem. The doom and gloom merchants are almost always arts majors with little command of math or science. The statistical errors in some of the opinion pieces one reads in the press (The Huffington Post in particular) are shocking.

Offhand, I can't really think of an applied science practitioner in modern times who wrote philosophical works or imaginative fiction. Maybe Primo Levi. Have you read The Wrench? A collection of workplace stories from engineering and construction projects, some very funny.

I resent your slur against the Huffington Post. You accuse it of statistical errors, but nowhere do you mention its sloppy writing and its neglect of the most basic fact-checking (the most recent example I found was in a story about Philadelphia whose accompanying list of corrections threatened to overwhelm the article. And i found another mistake.)

Although I understand what you're saying about the lack of scientific or statistical training in some of these writings, what I find interesting is that the way you are actually pointing out their lack of faith in human resourcefulness, which you would think a humanities background would give you a feel for, if for nothing else. I had my eyes opened on this around this time last year when I took a course on Global Poverty, where our assumptions were constantly challenged by data. One thing I remember is the instructors' thought about global population which contrary to pretty much everything I've ever heard about population growth, suggested the idea that more people meant the possibility of more innovators. The class was rather exhilarating in that sort of way, because it valued individual contribution as significant, and potentially game changing. And not just the contributions of the privileged either.

Well, doom and cynicism sell, don't they? In America, at least, optimism has been co-opted by Republicans, so what else is left besides doom-saying for a social scientist who wants to make a buck?

Interesting that the Rapa Nui book apparently shifts the blame from ecological to disease and rats introduced by Europeans. Once upon a time, and not so long ago, either, the latter would have been more in accord with (leftist) popular beliefs. So yes, this book appears worth a look. But the B&N that displayed all three of the Sean Duffy books on its shelves had no copy of the Lipo/Hunt in stock. I shall have to visit my local independent.

I should add that Adrian is not the only acquaintance of mine who maintains political views that would fit comfortably toward the left end of the spectrum in most respects but who is nonetheless dismayed by the how the media and politicians and the public deal with what is misleadingly called "climate change." (Such a term suggests a failure to recognize that what we ought to be worried about is man-made climate change.)

It's funny, but I have come to the opposite conclusion, Peter. Instead of worrying about how much human beings cause it, what we ought to be doing is trying to figure out how to mitigate it, regardless of its sources. Otherwise, it's going to be a hot time in the old town tonight.

I don't so much mean to suggest that we ought to ignore one and worry about the other. I'm really more worried that the term climate change suggests a lack of awareness of climatic cycles that long predate what we humans do to the atmosphere.

This is a essential step, since the the natural kind would be a lot easier to mitigate than the man-made variety, I think

Hmm--I would think the opposite. But in any case, I would think that human steps to actively cool down the planet would be a good idea regardless of why it was heating up. Just from a human rather than geological perspective I mean.

Jesus dont get me started on the Huffington Post, an organ which has done much to coarsen the discourse in America with its absurd opinion pieces from Depark Chopra and other eloquent hucksters...

I think it wd be very silly to argue that all the carbon we're burning is doing nothing to the climate but the doom merchants are just as absurd in many cases. James Lovelock predicted 25 years ago that NY and London wd be under water by now and when that didnt work out predicted it again a few months back in the Guardian for 20 years from now...

I'd love to point out to that book Abundance which has become a best seller which argues that very point. Its a very cheery look at Africa and its potential in particular and sort of makes my point about human ingenuity. Its been well reviewed and like I say is a best seller...

I cant recommend it at all though. I thought was a barely literate screed written by someone who has watched way too many TED talks and read too few books.

The thing about doom-mongering is that it doesn't inspire action but paralysis. We're all fucked; why bother?

Imagine if the Dutch had reacted to the encroaching sea in that way.

Which reminds me:Hitchhiking around Cork and Kerry in the late 70s i got a lift from farmer who got into a rant about Irish agriculture. "They say if the Dutch had Ireland, they could feed the world. And if the Irish had Holland, they'd drown"

Have a skim through Abundance but dont buy it. Or better yet watch what the authors say on TED. Thats really the medium to assess the book's arguments. But basically the message is one of optimism, particularly relating to Africa and poverty.

Yeah. Disaster fatigue or doom fatigue. Its silly. And the science doesnt back it up. Unless we get hit by a comet before we establish a Martian colony we humans are not going to die out any time soon.

Diamond and Flannery were together in PNG at one stage and are long-time friends. I guess that's how it goes with reviews these days. Maybe it always did.

I guess the key thing about a successful doomsday/collapse book is to pitch your ending just beyond the shelf-life of the book, so you'll be mostly forgotten and won't look too silly when it doesn't eventuate, but it's still near enough in the future to make people nervous. The internet has undermined that strategy somewhat.

Seems a big leap from Jared Diamond's possibly mistaken assumption about the end of life on Easter Island and some kid in Africa figuring out how to solve the carbon problem. Of course it could happen, but I can't quite get the connection.

I didn't provide the carbon solution, John. I think what the instructors were saying is rather than just looking at people as unwanted extras, you have to also think about how each person might also contribute some innovation or new way of looking at things that hasn't come up before. It isn't really a genius model, it's how is having that many more perspectives beneficial?

The connection is this: Jared Diamond underestimated the Rapa Nuians ability to think themselves out of an eco catastrophe, which apparently they did. There were only 15,000 Easter Islanders. In 10 years there are going to be a billion Africans under the age of 30 with the most diverse DNA of any human population and access to the world knowledge base through the internet so its not at all ridiculous at all to suggest that some African kid is going to become the next Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Einstein in fact it seems pretty likely. A human who cd invent cheap solar, or a cheap carbon scrubber or s'thing that will save the planet.

Adrian's always a good source for this kind of stuff Rob. I'll just add a couple of more recent ones, Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

I suspect you're right Peter. I came across it in the 70s when I asked an English Lit tutor acquaintance for reading suggestions. He was bright-eyed evangelical about Ellison. I think academics like him because he's ... academic.

I could suggest "The Fanatic" by James Robertson which I think is brilliant on identity, but teaching it to year 11 , or any year, would be an uphill battle to put it mildly.

I read the Fowler book in a galley form, so didn't know anything about it, which I think was better. KJF apparently doesn't think spoilers are that big a deal, but I beg to differ. It's a little like how I felt about knowing the protagonist of Fifty Grand before you start in, but more so.

Adrian: I bought the Lipo/Hunt book this week with part of my share of the settlement from the e-book pricing antitrust suit. Interesting that this is not a case of left vs. right, or of a "progressive" argument overturning a regressive one (or vice versa). Rather it's a case of an older "progressive" argument returning to debunk a newer one.

The argument that disease brought by Europeans is responsible for decimating a non-European population was once a popular argument on the left, I think, or at least an argument that enjoyed some cultural currency. Then environment became the hot cause. Now disease is back.

I wish I were more optimistic, but even our leaders in Canada are in bed with the oil and gas industry and denigrate scientists on a daily basis (what are these left-wing unions they are supposed to be in league with, anyhow?)

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More about me

I was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. After studying philosophy at Oxford University I emigrated to New York City where I lived in Harlem for seven years working in bars, bookstores, building sites and finally the basement stacks of the Columbia University Medical School Library in Washington Heights.

In 2000 I moved to Denver, Colorado where I taught high school English and started writing fiction in earnest. My first full length novel Dead I Well May Be was shortlisted for the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and was picked by Booklist as one of the 10 best crime novels of the year.

In mid 2008 I moved to St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia with my wife and kids. My last book In The Morning I'll Be Gone won the 2014 Ned Kelly Award.

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"If Raymond Chandler had grown up in Northern Ireland he would have written The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Times

"Hardboiled charm, evocative dialogue, an acute sense of place and a sardonic sense of humour make McKinty one to watch."

---The Guardian

"A literary thriller that is as concerned with exploring the poisonously claustrophobic demi-monde of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and the self-sabotaging contradictions of its place and time, as it is with providing the genre’s conventional thrills and spills. The result is a masterpiece of Troubles crime fiction: had David Peace, Eoin McNamee and Brian Moore sat down to brew up the great Troubles novel, they would have been very pleased indeed to have written The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Irish Times

"McKinty is a big new talent."

---The Daily Telegraph

"McKinty is a gifted man with poetry coursing through his veins and thrilling writing dripping from his fingertips."

---The Sunday Independent

"Adrian McKinty is fast gaining a reputation as the finest of the new generation of Irish crime writers, and it's easy to see why on the evidence of The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Glasgow Herald

"McKinty is a storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blur the line between genre and mainstream."

---Kirkus Reviews

"McKinty's literate expertly crafted crime novel confirms his place as one of his generation's leading talents."

---Publishers Weekly

"McKinty crackles with raw talent. His dialogue is superb, his characters rich and his plotting tight and seemless. He writes with a wonderful and wonderfully humorous flair for language raising his work above most crime genre offerings and bumping it right up against literature."

---The San Francisco Chronicle

"McKinty keeps getting better. He melds the snap and crackle of the old Mickey Spillane tales with the literary skills of Raymond Chandler and sets it all down in his own artful way."

---The Rocky Mountain News

"The first of McKinty's Forsythe novels, "Dead I Well May Be," was intense, focused and entirely brilliant. This one is looser-limbed, funnier...so, I imagine, is the middle book, "The Dead Yard," which I haven't read but which Publishers Weekly included on its list of the 12 best novels of 2006, along with works by Peter Abrahams, Richard Ford, Cormac McCarthy and George Pelecanos."

---The Washington Post

"McKinty, who grew up in Northern Ireland, has an ear for language and a taste for violence, and he serves up a terrifically gory, swiftly paced thriller."

---The Miami Herald

"There's nothing like an Irish tough guy. And we're not talking about Gentleman Gerry Cooney here. No, we mean the new breed of bare-knuckle Irish writers like Adrian McKinty, Ken Bruen and John Connolly who are bringing fresh life to the crime fiction genre."

---The Philadelphia Inquirer

"McKinty's writing is dark and witty with gritty realism, spot on dialogue, and fascinating characters."

---The Chicago Sun-Times

"If you like your noir staples such as beautiful women, betrayal, murder, mixed with a heavy dose of blood, crunched bones, body parts flying around served up with some throwaway humour, you need look no further, McKinty delivers all of this with the added bonus that the writing is pitch perfect."

---The Barcelona Review

"I really enjoyed [Dead I Well May Be’s] combination of toughness and a striking literary style. Both those things are evident in Hidden River. McKinty is going places."

---The Observer

"This is a terrific read. McKinty gives us a strong non stop story with attractive characters and fine writing."

---The Morning Star

"[McKinty] draws us close and relates a fantastic tale of murder and revenge in low, wry tones, as if from the next barstool...he drops out of conversational mode to throw in a few breathtaking fever-dream sequences for flavor. And then he springs an ending so right and satisfying it leaves us numb with delight and ready to pop for another round. Start the cliche machine: This is a profoundly satisfying book from a major new talent and one of the best crime fiction debuts of the year."

---Booklist

"The story is soaked in the holy trinity of the noir thriller: betrayal, money and murder, but seen through with a panache and political awareness that give McKinty a keen edge over his rivals."

---The Big Issue

"A darkly humorous cross between a hard-boiled mystery and a Beat novel."

---The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"A roller coaster of highs and lows, light humour and dark deeds, the powerful undercurrent of McKinty's talent will swiftly drag you away. Let's hope the author does not slow down anytime soon."

---The Irish Examiner

"A virtual carnival of slaughter."

---The Wall Street Journal

"McKinty has once again harnassed the power of poetry, violence, lust and revenge to forge a sequel to his acclaimed Dead I Well May Be."

"McKinty writes with the soul of a poet; his prose dances off the pages with Old World grace and haunting intensity. It's crime fiction on the level of Michael Connolly with the conviction of James Hall."

---The Jackson Clarion-Ledger

"The Bloomsday Dead is the explosive final installment in a trilogy of kinetic thrillers."

---The New York Times

"Adrian McKinty has garnered nothing but praise for his first two books. The third in the trilogy The Bloomsday Dead should leave no doubt that he is a true star. Fast moving and highly engaging this is a great book. McKinty just gets better and better."

---CrimeSpree

"Until The Dead Yard's relentless, poignant ending you'll turn these pages as quickly as you can."

---The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"McKinty's Dead Trilogy has been praised by critics, who call it "intense," "masterful" and "loaded with action." If your reading pleasure leans toward thrillers offering suspense, close calls, wry wit, sharp dialogue, local color and sudden mayhem, you wont do better."

What's Next For Me?

A couple more books, a few birthdays, some shuffleboard then a period spent in the digestive tract of earthworms, followed by molecular breakdown, the sun boiling into space, the heat death of the universe, atomic decay, perpetual darkness, a trillion years of nothingness and then, if we're lucky, brane collapse, a new singularity and a new Big Bang.